When leadership fails, those following often tend to fail as well. Our country and our Church cannot survive without strong leaders – and we need them now more than ever. Today's commentary addresses this and encourages us to take action through fasting and prayer so that the leaders within the Church will heroically defend the Church and Christ's teaching.

This nation's moral decline is astounding not only because it has been a relatively swift slide, but more importantly because Catholics have taken leading roles in bringing about the decline.

Until the time of his death, Ted Kennedy was, for years, the most influential U.S. politician advocating an anti-Christian moral culture in America. While doing so he experienced good personal relations, if not admiration, from many American Catholic prelates.

Catholic vice president Joe Biden first took public office in 1972. Since the decriminalization of abortion in 1973, Mr. Biden has supported every major effort to protect and expand abortion in America. Most recently Mr. Biden has become a proponent of the destruction of the covenant of marriage by redefining it to suit the winds of the day which favor so-called same-sex marriage.

Nancy Pelosi, Catholic congresswoman and a graduate of Catholic Trinity Washington University, has been a consistently fierce opponent of life. She has worked doggedly to expand the "right" to abortion in America and to enshrine contraception and sterilization as the force de jure on America's employers – including the Church. She is also a staunch advocate of forcing the acceptance of anti-family militant homosexuality and the destruction of marriage as "human rights" in America.

Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, as the head of Health and Human Services, is singularly responsible for wreaking upon the American Catholic faithful her Planned Parenthood "HHS" mandate that dictates that all employers pay for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception for their employees. Kathleen Sebelius is also a graduate of Catholic Trinity Washington University.

As the faithful watch the accelerated destruction of morality in America and the Henry the VIII style tactics of the attempted destruction of Catholicism in America by Obama and his "Catholic" drones, one wonders where most of America's bishops are.

Why have these high-profile destructive Catholics not been publically rebuked? In fact, why did this not happen years or even decades ago? To cut right to the heart of the matter, why haven't each of these hypocrites been publically and unequivocally excommunicated?

This near total absence of effective rebuke and call to accountability from the shepherds has created a perception that "American Catholics" are free to support intrinsic evils as "civil rights" because Catholic teachings, in their view, are subjective and arbitrary.

How many millions of people have bought into this demonic deceit and, in the process, jeopardized their souls? And where are the bishops who should risk life and limb in the defense of our Church? Why haven't they, in a united fashion, rebuked the deceivers and championed Christ and His truth at all costs?

With only a few exceptions, they are hardly to be found.

To some extent the bishops of the United States have negligently created the climate and the culture for such possible consequences to exist in the first place. Sadly, Cardinal George of Chicago said he could imagine his successor being martyred. What has led us to this point?

A person who disagrees with Catholic teaching and who demands illicit, harmful changes is defined as liberal and progressive, while those who heroically defend the faith against the powerful cultural currents are defined as zealots and "ultra conservatives." They would even label Christ as an ultra-conservative zealot for His many hard sayings found in scripture.

In light of this predicament, we must first realize that Christ promised that the gates of hell will never prevail against His Church. The current climate is one that many bishops have unwittingly or, in some cases, deliberately fostered.

They have far too long allowed deception and deceit without consequence and at great cost to the faithful. Now the "Catholics" who have perpetrated great public scandal and harm are looking to devour the weak shepherds and their flocks through mandates, dictates, and the total deconstruction of morality in America.

This dire situation reminds me of the biblical account in the Gospel of Mark when Christ confronts an evil spirit that has possessed a man. He commands the spirit to depart, which it does with great violence and screeching. Witnessing this, Christ's disciples ask why they could not drive out the demon. Christ responds: "This kind can only be driven out by prayer and fasting."

I believe the current situation in America falls into the same category. A demon of despair and compromise has afflicted a majority of our Catholic bishops, and in response faithful Catholics must pray and fast.

Therefore, I am encouraging every faithful Catholic to pray and fast for our bishops. Pray that God raises up more heroic souls who will help defend and reclaim the truth of Christ through decisive action.

Pray that each bishop will be touched by the Holy Spirit, on fire with a renewal of commitment to Christ and an active desire to abandon everything else in order to defend Christ and His Church from sacrilege – even unto death if that be God's will.

Catholics need shepherds. Let us resolve to pray and fast that this need is fulfilled to the greatest extent possible. Let us resolve to make 2013 the year of sacrifice and prayer for Catholic bishops.

American Life League is encouraging the faithful to participate in a campaign to pray and fast for the country's bishops. You will find all of the details at http://www.all.org/prayandfast.

Judie Brown

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization... (more)

Judie Brown is president and co-founder of American Life League, the nation's largest grassroots pro-life educational organization.

She has served three terms as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome. Daily Catholic cited her as one of the top 100 Catholics of the 20th century.

Judie has appeared on 20/20, 60 Minutes, Mother Angelica Live, The O'Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Today, Oprah, and Larry King Live, as well as hundreds of other television and radio talk shows. Her comments regularly appear in major print media nationwide, and she has written numerous editorial pieces for magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post and USA Today.

Judie is married to Paul A. Brown, and they have three children and nine grandchildren. She and her husband have been involved in the pro-life movement since 1969.